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Team Building (A.K.A. When Is a Leadership Team...."Not"?)
A leadership team "isn't a team" when it's members don't trust one another. It won't operate at its best if the members even mistrust a single person on the team.
A leadership team doesn't operate when it's members work in their own silos--placing their personal or department agendas ahead of the team's.
A leadership team doesn't point fingers at one another--because they know that four of those fingers are often pointing back at themselves.
A leadership team doesn't withold helpful, constructive criticism or debate around key ideas in order to "make nice" with the others.
A leadership team doesn't let take their collective or individual "eyes off the goal" and allow critical progress toward results to go unaddressed. And a leadership doesn't continuously take on new projects before they execute and complete the current.
So where does teamwork start?
In Patrick Lencioni's book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the author places "trust" at the foundation of building effective leadership and management teams. If you've not read the book--I place it at the top 5 useful business books I've read. Like Lencioni, I also place trust at the core of an effective team.
Earning and building trust is a two-way street--and it happens on and off the court. When team members trust one another--each knows that he or she can count on the other members to work together for the good of the team. Personal agendas are checked at the door. Attempts at control and power-grabbing are absent. The agreed upon objectives of the team become "goal #1" for all--with no exceptions.
Leadership teams can attempt to master all the other qualities of a high performing team--but if trust is missing--or even in question, the collective results will suffer.
Do you have a team? If the answer is no, where do you need to start?
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